


Somniloquy

by FairyTrashMother



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sleep talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:00:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28279533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairyTrashMother/pseuds/FairyTrashMother
Summary: Four nights. Four nights in a row, Geralt had woken to Eskel grinding his teeth and grunting in his sleep, his hands flailing. Four nights in a row, Geralt had slid his hand across Eskel’s chest, whispering sweet nonsense to gentle him back asleep.Three mornings where Eskel refused to talk about it. Geralt lay staring at the ceiling, listening to Eskel’s deep, soft breaths beside him and worried.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48
Collections: The Witcher Secret Santa 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bunnyofnegativeeuphoria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyofnegativeeuphoria/gifts).



> This is a for the Witcher Secret Santa exchange, written for bunnyofnegativeeuphoria!

Four nights. Four nights in a row, Geralt had woken to Eskel grinding his teeth and grunting in his sleep, his hands flailing. Four nights in a row, Geralt had slid his hand across Eskel’s chest, whispering sweet nonsense to gentle him back asleep. 

Three mornings where Eskel refused to talk about it. Geralt lay staring at the ceiling, listening to Eskel’s deep, soft breaths beside him and worried. 

It wasn’t the usual sort of refusal either. Typically a nightmare was brushed off with a terse “Rough year,” or “The usual,” but Eskel was _refusing_ to admit that something was bothering him to begin with. Something that was bothering him well into winter. Something that he wouldn’t talk about with Geralt.

Perhaps that was the worst of it. There was something bothering him that he wouldn’t share with Geralt. That he didn’t seem to have shared with anyone else. He seemed almost annoyed when Geralt had pressed, brushing it all off and insisting that he didn’t remember a nightmare and that he was fine, Geralt was jumping at shadows, that he was just tired and being punchy and weird. 

Geralt _was_ exhausted. It wasn’t that Eskel seemed to be avoiding sleep, sitting up with him and playing Gwent well past their usual bedtime. It wasn’t that he was woken in the middle of the night every night, it wasn’t that he couldn't get back to sleep afterwards. He was _worried_ , and that was draining beyond all measure. 

What was Eskel hiding from him? That’s what it was, he was certain. Eskel must be keeping it back to himself, and what was so bad that he couldn’t share it with Geralt?

They had shared their hunt stories already, their near misses. Geralt had made several extremely thorough examinations of Eskel’s body so far this winter, and there weren’t any new scars of note. So if it wasn’t something bad that had happened to him-

Bile rose in the back of Geralt’s throat at the possibilities. Something that hadn’t left a mark? Something that had almost happened? Surely he would have come out with it and told Geralt. A bad batch of potion? A near miss with a mage? Surely not Eskel, the most studious and most magically gifted. Surely not Eskel, the most level headed and amiable of them. Surely it was something else.

But then there was always the possibility that if it hadn’t happened to him, it had happened to someone else, and that was always, _always_ worse. Especially if it was some random innocent. Especially when it was a _child._ If it had been something that had happened to someone else, then that meant that it wasn’t fear or pain eating at Eskel, it was guilt and shame and horror and self loathing, a black, oily combination that Witchers all knew too well. 

Years ago, decades really, they had learned that the only thing for it was to push it down or analyze where you failed and work out how to be better. But the trainers had stressed that the way that you learn was to go over it with someone else, someone you trusted, someone who could tell you objectively where you had failed. If that wasn’t Geralt, it should be Vesemir. And yes, Geralt knew he should respect Eskel’s privacy and let him tell Geralt all about it in his own time, but right now Geralt was _worried_. Decision made, he heaved his tired body from bed and wandered into the quiet of the pre-dawn keep, down to the kitchen where Vesemir was preparing breakfast. 

\---

Geralt sat at the breakfast table, tense and exhausted, breakfast passing in a blur of food he couldn’t taste, conversation he couldn’t follow, and worried glances he couldn’t see. Vesemir had been no help, insisting that Eskel hadn’t said anything worryingly negative about his year, and seemed perfectly fine to him. Instead, he’d asked _Geralt_ if _he_ was ok, and then spent most of breakfast prep asking him how he felt, how he’d been sleeping. It wasn’t _about_ Geralt, it was about Eskel and Eskel _hiding_ something. 

Something big. 

Something painful. 

His chores dragged, simultaneously taking forever and rushing by in a blur, and by supper he honestly couldn’t say what, exactly, he’d done all day. Food was served, and then his plate was clean but he wasn’t entirely certain what he’d eaten, only that he was staring down at the crumbs of a meal while Vesemir started cleaning and Lambert pulled out his Gwent deck.

“Hey.” Eskel’s big, warm hand settled on Geralt’s shoulder. “You look wrecked. Why don’t you head up and get a head start on sleep, and I’ll get in a little practice beating the kid here and join you in a little bit?” Lambert squawked indignantly and Geralt conceded to himself that perhaps he was exhausted and needed some sleep before the next round of nightmares.

“Yeah. Ok, yeah,” he agreed, rising from the table. 

Eskel pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to his temple. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you alone too long”. Geralt turned his face and Eskel rewarded him with a warm, proper kiss to his lips. “Go on, try to get some sleep.”

Geralt scoffed lightly but headed up to bed, stripping slowly and climbing into bed nude. _Maybe_ , he thought, _maybe tonight would be different._

\--

Geralt snapped awake in an instant. The fire had burned low, and apparently he hadn’t heard Eskel come to bed, because here he was beside Geralt, covers pulled up over hunched shoulders. The sound of Eskel’s teeth grinding came again, accompanied by a sharp “No!”

Geralt’s heart plummeted. Five nights. Five nights of his best friend, the love of his life _suffering_ and refusing to let him help. It was dangerous to wake a Witcher from a nightmare, even for another Witcher, but Geralt’s hand slid across the sheets towards Eskel anyway. Those few hand-spans felt like leagues. 

“Eskel.” Eskel grunted and rolled away from him, taking most of the covers with him, and if he could have cried, he would have. Maybe it was years of friendship with a poet, but the unconscious gesture felt symbolic. There he went, pulling away and seeking comfort from anything _but_ Geralt. Heart in his throat, he tried again, a little louder. “Eskel.”

Eskel snorted and flopped back over onto his back, his hands leaving his blanket cocoon and coming up to hover over his chest, elbows bent, his hands holding something in his dream. “No,” he grunted. “Not Scoia'tael.”

Geralt’s heart thumped painfully. Scoia'tael? They didn’t tend to start shit with Witchers who minded their own business, but they were known to be brutal and inventive interrogators. _What had they done_? Mouth dry, Geralt licked his lips and tried again. “Es-”

Eskel’s arm shot out wide and slammed across Geralt’s face. “FUCK YOUR MARDROEME,” he roared, before gathering the blanket around himself once more and tossing himself violently on his side. 

Geralt lay frozen. Mardroeme? Like the mushroom, or-? _No._ All at once it hit him. _The Gwent card_. 

Geralt felt absolutely poleaxed. The _Gwent card_ . The play that Lambert had beaten him with a day earlier. Eskel was dreaming about _Gwent_ . About the bloody _tournament_ he’d been talking about entering this year coming. About the card game that he played almost nightly before bed. 

Not death, not blood, not torture, not war, _a card game_. 

Before he’d even fully processed that he was moving, Geralt had already sat up and brought his pillow down across Eskel’s head. “ _Gwent?_ ”

Eskel jerked and rolled, tangling in the blanket and hitting the floor with a shocked shout. 

“ _Gwent?!_ ” Geralt swung again, catching a bewildered Eskel just as he was sitting up. 

He swung again but Eskel got his hands up in time to catch Geralt’s. “What the _fuck_ Geralt?”

“You’ve been dreaming about a card game? You’ve sounded like you’re dying! Like you’re reliving the worst moments of your life, and its stress over a _card tournament_ ? For _days_ I’ve been wondering why you wouldn’t tell me what’s wrong, why you were shutting me out, why you didn’t trust me anymore, and you’ve been fussing about _cards?_ ”

Geralt jerked his wrists, struggling to get one more shot in, but failing as Eskel knee-walked back onto the bed. 

In the low light of the half-dead fire Eskel looked gutted. “Geralt, you know I love you and wouldn’t keep anything from you, not anything that big”. He shuffled closer, tugging Geralt in by his trapped wrists. “That’s what’s been wrong? You thought I didn’t trust you anymore?”

Geralt sat back on his heels and dropped his gaze to Eskel’s chest. “It looked like you were in pain about something”, he said softly. “I was scared when you wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.”

Eskel sighed softly and plucked the pillow from Geralt’s grip, only to bop him gently on the head with it a moment later. “I love you, stupid. Look at me.” He tipped Geralt’s chin up with a gentle finger. “I love you. If something is wrong, I’ll tell you. I’m sorry I scared you, but I’ve _been_ inviting you to play Gwent with me, we’ve all been playing. I just didn’t realize that I’d been talking about it in my sleep, too.”

“You thrashed too,” Geralt mumbled petulantly. “Stole the blankets and hit me in the face with your arm.”

“Oh no. You must have been so cold,” Eskel teased. “Come here, let me warm you up and kiss that face better.”

They didn’t get around to dragging the blanket back up onto the bed for some time, but that night, the fifth night, there were plenty of kisses and no lack of warmth.


	2. And Then The Smut

Eskel tugged him in to steal another kiss and Geralt felt suddenly desperate. He was still annoyed, and he would never let Eskel live this down, but that was for tomorrow. This night, the fifth night, he needed to feel Eskel against him, in him. Eskel nipped gently at his lower lip, and when Geralt parted his lips to answer the unspoken request, Eskel lapped inside slow and gentle. 

Geralt would deny later, that he had clung to Eskel, but there truly wasn’t another word for it. He clung to him, desperate to feel skin on skin, and when it wasn’t quite enough, he shoved desperately at Eskel’s braises and practically glued himself to Eskel’s front again when they were out of the way. 

Careful not to break the kiss, Eskel lowered them to the bed, hand groping under the pillows for the tin of slick they kept there to be close at hand and conveniently warmed by their body heat. The top came off with a sucking sound, and moments later Eskel’s fingers were at Geralt’s entrance. Eskel broke the kiss but rested his forehead against Geralt’s, watching his face as he worked his lover open with care. Geralt was too tired and too relieved to hide his expression, and guilty as Eskel felt about accidentally terrifying him, he reveled in Geralt’s openness. His creased brow and the soft whimpers as Eskel worked another finger and another into him, rutting against him and, touching all the right places.

When Eskel finally, finally slicked himself and began to slide home he braced his forearms on either side of Geralt’s head and peppered his face with soft, lingering kisses. Geralt wrapped his legs tight around Eskel’s hips, rutting his cock against Eskel’s stomach before grinding back on his cock. 

They rocked together for what felt like an age and a moment all at once, neither particularly seeking their orgasm and instead enjoying the closeness. It still found them, in the end. Geralt felt the _warmtighttingle_ of his approaching orgasm and let it happen. It washed through him like the surf on the shore, wiping away the debris of his thoughts and leaving behind a beautiful, glistening peace.

Eskel followed him moments later, pressing his lips to Geralt’s and moaning into his mouth as he came. 

They lay together, nuzzling noses across cheeks and lips across brows until their sweat had cooled and the sticking became uncomfortable, and then a little longer, until Geralt was nearly asleep again. 

As Eskel rose to get washcloth he heard a soft chuckle from the bed. 

  
“Can’t wait to tell Lambert you have stress dreams about fucking _Gwent._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this and then I was like "hang on, there's room for good, emotional porn here too" because that's apparently the only kind I can write, so anyway, this is the ending for people who just want a lovely happy ending, and then there's chapter 2 for the people who want the winkwinknudgenudge happy ending ifyouknowwhatimean


End file.
